IFTF

About Virtual China

ABOUT THE BLOG:

Virtual China is an exploration of virtual experiences and environments in and about China. The topic is also the primary research area for the Institute for the Future's Asia Focus Program in 2006. IFTF is an independent, nonprofit strategic research group with more than 35 years of forecasting experience based in Palo Alto, CA.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS:

Lyn Jeffery is a cultural anthropologist and Research Director at the Insitute for the Future, where she leads its Asia Focus Program. Jason Li is currently a design research intern at Adaptive Path. He previously worked at IFTF & Microsoft Research Asia, and recently graduated from Brown University. Nan Yang is a freelancer in Shanghai whose many projects include part-time Mandarin teacher at MandarinShanghai.com, assistant for Eric Eldred from
Creative Commons, translating manager for gOFFICE, translator for MeMedia, member of Social Brain Foundation, and author of 1idea1day.com. She is also
passionate to take part in small and innovative seminars in Shanghai.

About Asia Focus

In response to the great need for foresight about Asia, IFTF has launched the Asia Focus Program. Asia Focus research topics are large-scale, under-explored areas from which unexpected futures will emerge. It is part of IFTF's flagship program, the Ten-Year Forecast Program, which provides a broad scan of the environment and is a leading source of foresight for a vangard of business, government, and nonprofit organizations.

January 01, 2008

December 26, 2007, was the 111th Birthday of Mao Zedong. Chinese people held various ceremonies to memorize the first Chairman of the People's Republic of China. In Beijing, over ten thousand people visited Chairman Mao Memorial Hall (mausoleum) to see dear Chairman Mao's body. In Mao's hometown, Shao Shan in Hunan province, there were six different events to memorize their dear Chairman Mao, including a new Hope Chinese School founding ceremony, ten thousand people marathon-race,
111 families celebrating with Chairman Mao, ten thousand people eating longevity noodles together, and so on. Moreover, Chinese Communist Party History Publishing House published a new golden version of Mao's handwriting. Those ceremony ended on December 26.

May 03, 2007

Shanghai's One CIty Nine Towns program and foreign-themed New Towns are strange and wonderful things. All are collaborative efforts between Chinese and international design teams.

Shanghai urban planners are trying to preserve the center of the city by not building any more new highways, and by setting up 9 satellite cities, or "New Towns" far out in the Shanghai suburbs. But they need to attract people out of the city, into the outskirts--a tough job, unless you can create an atmosphere and lifestyle that one can't find downtown.

British-themed Thamestown covers 1 square kilometer in Songjiang District, about 1 hour from downtown Shanghai. It has a lake, a river, a golf course, a Gothic church, a town square, and villas with names like WindsorIsland. Here is the Thamestown official website in English, with news about the latest commercials and movies that were shot there, among other events (boat racing). Thamestown officially opened October 20, 2006; here you can see the opening ceremony festitivities--Chinese dance performance against the backdrop of First Vision Creativity Square.

Luodian is the Swedish town. In a great post on Luodian and its original source, the Swedish town of Sigtuna, graduate student Ada Fredelius points out an irony: you can find more ancient authenticity, and even similarity to the original Swedish buildings, in Luodian's old town, constructed in the early Min Dynasty. Luodian's old town on top, Sweden's Sigtuna on the bottom, below:

April 25, 2007

Came across this during my car roaming yesterday. The China Motor Vehicle Documentation Centre, founded in the Netherlands in 1972 and currently located in France, publishes a series of what look like wonderful books on automotive history of China and North Korea. They have, for instance, a book on the history of the Hongqi (Red Flag) limousines, made by the First Auto Works in Changchun, China, once the favored ride of top Chinese officials. The oldest cars in this book are the Dongfeng CA 71 (1958), the Da Hongqi limousines (1958- 1995), and the Da Hongqi inspection cars (1958- 1999).

Then there's the just-out book on North Korean trucks and cars. From the website blurb: Trucks made by the Sungri General Auto Works, Heavy dumper made by the March 30th Works, Cross country vehicles made by the Pyongsang Auto Works, Trolleybuses made by the Pyongyang Trolleybus Works, Buses made by the Chongjin Bus Works, The Pyonghwa Auto Works

Also, Shanghai Saloons from the Artisan Era, describing all cars (production models and prototypes) made by the Shanghai Auto Works in Shanghai from 1958 until today.The books are pricey, ranging from 55-69 euros, but they look beautiful!

to concentrate efforts on the
construction of 694 large and medium-sized industrial projects,
including 156 with the aid of the Soviet Union, so as to lay that the
primary foundations for China’s socialist industrialization; to develop
agricultural producers’ cooperatives to help in the socialist
transformation of the agriculture and handicraft industries; to put
capitalist industry and commerce on the track of state capitalism so as
to facilitate the socialist transformation of private industry and
commerce.

February 27, 2007

Folklorists, historians, and anthropologists of the future will have a huge new source of self-generated firsthand reports of folk customs around China, complete with photos and pretty soon, audio and video. Poking around Tianya trying to understand a bit more about some of the big forums, I came across this lively, descriptive Feb. 27 post titled [Chaoshan] Hometown Great Pig Contest. A rough translation of the post, followed by photos and selected comments:

Guanlong, Denghai [in Guangdong province] has the custom of an annual "Great Pig Contest." This contest is a folk ceremony for celebrating an abundant year, similar to praying for a bumper harvest and prosperity. But the spectacle and grandeur of this ceremony is rarely seen in these parts, and in addition the Great Pig Contest promotes growth.

On the 18th day of the first month of the lunar calendar, the site of Denghai's Great Pig Contest is quite a spectacle. All one can see is over 500 flayed-open fat pigs, each spread on a wooden frame about 1 meter in height. Looking in that direction, one sees a field of snow white. These porcine offerings have their heads held high and their mouths stuffed with tangerines. They look as if they're leaping forward, presenting a scene of vigor and high spirits. Attached to each wooden frame is a red label reading, " so-and-so fortune and respect" so that each family can identify its own offering. People are milling about, each wanting to be submerged in the center of the crowd, and only bits and pieces can be seen of even the tallest. Shouts echo through the crowd as people try to locate one another.

Every year the largest pig is put forth in the front row with its weight displayed. They're generally about 1000 jin or more. In addition to labeling it with the family name, the biggest ones were also wearing big red flowers!

These huge pigs have all been raised since last spring. There's a very rigorous process for keeping them fat and healthy. It's said that every year the Great Pig Contest takes place on the 17th and 18th of the first lunar month, and that it's organized on a rotating basis by different family lineages. And as it's at the beginning of the year, this kind of contest can not only enliven the farmers' enthusiasm for production and fill the new year with hope, it also increases the atmosphere of joyous celebration.

So lively! My spouse's family does this too, we call it "Displaying Pigs and Sheep," sometime around the new year. It's a shame I've been unable to see it for many years!

May I ask, what do they do with all the pigs after the contest? If the weather's a bit hot, wouldn't the pig flesh start to stink?

Is it interesting? It makes me feel I've entered a slaughterhouse. What a strange folk custom!

It's really a problem, what to do with all that pork.

For those animal rights people, have you never eaten meat before? Who are you kidding?

February 26, 2007

A very smart, balanced, readable report, "How Much Inequality can China Stand?" has just been issued by Nick Young at China Development Brief. The report relies on Chinese scholarly and government data to give a succinct summary of some of the key areas of inequality in China today: gender, income (including intra-rural inequality), access to basic services and social protections such as education and health care, exposure to "externalities" such as the effects of urban congestion and pollution, environment and proximity to pollution, and land use deals.

The report argues that market forces are unlikely to create greater income convergence in the short-term, that state involvement is necessary and that it does exist:

...the predominantly urban NGOs that have emerged over the last decade, the “public intellectuals” who have voiced their concerns and the more adventurous media that have reported those concerns, by no means constitute a coordinated, united or oppositional force. There are, to be sure, some angry individuals who denounce abuses in ways that invite confrontation with the authorities. But the characteristic form of civil society advocacy in China is to call on government leaders to “pay more attention” to this or that social issue, to “hear the voice” of this or that social group, and/or to consult more extensively with NGOs, intellectuals, and the general public....The central government has recently introduced a number of social, economic and fiscal policy measures to alleviate rural hardship. It is too soon to judge the effect of these palliatives but they do at least appear designed to address what was, by the turn of the century, beginning to look like a crisis in the countryside.

February 25, 2007

Jay Dautcher alerted me to the current number one video on Google Video. It's been seen over 280,000 times, almost 100,000 of those in the last 24 hours. It's a 77 minute video called The Rape of Nanking (Nightmare in Nanking), originally produced in English by a Dr. Rhawn Joseph and his Brainmind organization, and now voiced over in Mandarin. Dr. Joseph seems to have a fascination with the strange and macabre, and has produced such bizarre "classics" as Hitler's Diaries, the Face and Pyramids of Mars, Alpha and Omega Antichrist, and a series of Brain Mind lectures. You can find the English version of Nanking Nightmare in several parts on Youtube, where it has been viewed 135,000 times in the last 3 months. The promo for the video has quotes such as this:

We had fun killing Chinese. We
caught some innocent Chinese and either buried them alive, or pushed
them into a fire, or beat them to death with clubs. When they were half
dead we pushed them into ditches and burned them, torturing them to
death. Everyone gets his entertainment this way. Its like killing dogs
and cats." --Asahi Shimbun, Japanese soldier, describing Japanese
atrocities during the Rape of Nanking.

This year is the 70th anniversary of the massacre. A quick Baidu search turns up a groundswell of attention in the last week or so for the film. For instance, China Youth Daily editor Qiu Haiping wrote an impassioned post on his blog on Feb 22, rallying Chinese viewers to see the film and to show it to their children as well. It was immediately reposted at forums, such as here at Tianya on the same day. Some comments on the Tianya repost:

The Americans see Sino-Japanese relations warming up
so they deliberately put out this film. Bush says to Japan,
look, you've got so much hatred with China,
China is not going to let it go. Just be good and let me piss on you.
That evil American government, there's nothing they won't think of.

The best teacher for Chinese youth's anti-Japanese education is Japan itself! The Chinese government has actually been suppressing anti-Japanese sentiment inside China. In 2005, the explosion of anti-Japanese demonstrations was led by the Internet's development in China. Thanks to the Internet, which has allowed us to understand more truths, and led us to throw away those ridiculous fantasies!

Actually, those Chinese who are familiar with the Japanese atrocities all hold a strong desire for revenge, and hope that China will punish Japan for it one day. Many Chinese don't want to see any more propaganda from Chinese officials about "Sino-Japanese friendship." We are looking for an excuse for the second Sino-Japanese war. The short-sightedness, bullying and shameless nature of the Japanese are an opportunity for Chinese to get revenge!...

Watch this movie not to make us remember hate, not to make us take revenge, but to make us study history, so that both countries can peacefully coexist.

No matter what the U.S. does, they're still different from Japan because they are still human. The Japanese will always be beasts.